Combining Carrier & Essential Oils

You’ve probably heard of essential oils, but what about carrier oils? You may know the latter more by their respective names (i.e. avocado oil and jojoba oil). While you can use them individually, when you combine the two together, they can create a pretty fantastic blend. Research is so very important when you’re combining carrier and essential oils, so let’s dive in and talk a bit about some of the tips for how to use the two for a whole host of wonderful benefits.

Be Careful When Applying to the Skin
Essential oils are volatile, highly-concentrated, and come from different parts of plants while carrier oils are vegetable oils that come from the seeds, nuts, etc (the fatty part) of plants. While there are some who apply essential oils directly to the skin, it’s best if you dilute them by using a carrier oil simply because not doing so could cause a bad skin reaction. It’s one of the reasons it’s highly recommended by many to dilute them first, and you should take extreme caution if using them on skin that’s already inflamed or damaged.

Determine a Use
When you want to get more into using essential oils and carrier oils, your first step (other than research of course) is to decide what exactly it is that you want to use them for. For example, do you want to use them for massage? To make a face cream? To improve your mood? To create your own exfoliating scrub? There are a whole host of uses for the oils, it’s just a matter of determining what you want to do with them.

Determine Your Purpose
Are you just looking to create an item that smells good or do you have a specific purpose in mind like boosting your mood or easing motion sickness? Combining essential oils and carrier oils to make products such as massage oils, face creams, body lotions, etc, could also have mind-body-spirit purposes such as relaxing your muscles, helping to improve circulation, softening the skin, and easing mental fatigue. There are also certain essential oil blends, such as ones for energizing or improving memory, that you could take into consideration as well. It’s important to determine your purpose behind your combination before you get started just so you can make sure you formulate everything properly.

Decide What Scents You Really Love
There are a whole variety of essential oils and carrier oils that you can use to make different items, so one of the major steps is determining what scents you adore. For example, there’s lavender, rose, birch, chamomile, cinnamon, frankincense, lemon, jasmine, and grapefruit essential oils. You can use them individually or you can create blends that are a combination of two or more. While there are some carrier oils that have no odor to them, there are others that have a very light aroma (nothing compared to essential oils, however), so you’ll want to consider that as well when you’re deciding which to combine together.

Determine What Your Skin Can Tolerate
Regardless of what essential oil and carrier oil you want to use on your skin, you’ll want to do a patch test first. Whether it’s using carrier oils such as jojoba, sweet almond, or avocado or essential oils such as lavender, Roman chamomile, or rose, you’ll want to make sure the combination of oils can work well with your particular skin type. This is also one of the reasons it’s so vital that you execute recipes perfectly.

Deciding what carrier oils and essential oils to use and combining them together are only the first two steps in creating a new item. The third part is paying attention to how they make you feel when you use them. Did they give you the results you were hoping for? If not, you could always adjust the blend to maybe include another essential oil with the same properties or try a different carrier oil. There are so many different combinations so you’re sure to find at least one one that works for you.